Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine is the toast of Moscow society, a beautiful actress in an infamous theatre troupe.Her love life is as colourful as the parts she plays. She is the estranged wife of a descendant of Genghis Khan. And her ex-husband has threatened to kill anyone who courts her.He appears to be making good on his promise.Fandorin is contacted by concerned friend - the widowed wife of Chekhov - who asks him to investigate an alarming incident involving Eliza. But when he watches Eliza on stage for the first time, he falls desperately in love . . . Can he solve the case - and win over Eliza - without attracting the attentions of the murderer he is trying to find?

Author Boris Akunin Original title Левиафан Translator Andrew Bromfield Country Russia Language Russian Series Erast Fandorin Genre Historical detective Publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson Publication date 1998 Published in English April 2004 Media type Print (Paperback) The novel is set in 1878. The story opens with the murder in Paris of Lord Littleby, all seven of his servants and two children of servants. All were poisoned except for Littleby, who was bludgeoned with an ancient Indian artifact, a golden statuette of Shiva, which belonged to Lord Littleby and was stolen from his room, along with an old Indian shawl. French detective Gustave Gauche, in charge of the investigation, boards the passenger ship Leviathan. Gauche knows that the murderer must be one of the first-class passengers, because one of the special golden badges for the ship's first-class passengers was left in Littleby's room. Among the suspects are a Japanese army officer, an addled English aristocrat, a married Swiss woman, and a clever young Russian diplomat on his way to his new post in Japan. The diplomat is Erast Fandorin, the master detective, who shoots down each of the ineffectual Gauche's incorrect conclusions, and in the end takes it on himself to find the murderer.

In the dying days of the Nineteenth Century, the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk is shaken out of its sleepy rural existence by the arrival from St Petersburg of a Synodical Inspector with a hidden agenda and a dangerously persuasive manner.Meanwhile, in the nearby country estate of Drozdovka, one of the prized white Bulldogs - prized because of its one brown ear, and its propensity to drool - belonging to the cantankerous lady of the house has been poisoned. The old widow has taken to her bed, sick with fear that her two remaining dogs may face a similar fate, and the many potential beneficiaries of her will wait fretfully to see whether or not she will recover.Sister Pelagia: bespectacled, freckled, woefully clumsy and astonishingly resourceful is summoned by the Bishop of Zavolzhsk to investigate the bulldog's death. But her investigation soon takes a far more sinister turn when two headless bodies are pulled out of the river on the edge of the estate.

Just as the dust from the case of the White Bulldog begins to settle in the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk, it is shaken up once again by the arrival of a stranger: this time, a desperately frightened monk from the island monastery of New Ararat, who seeks the help of the bishop, Mitrofanii.The monks have been troubled by visions of a dark, hooded figure: a figure that appears to walk on the waters of the vast Blue Lake surrounding their monastery. Sceptical of ghost stories and dismissive of rural superstitions, Mitrofanii dispatches Alexei Lentochkin, his clever young ward, to investigate the mystery, only for Lentochkin himself to appear to fall victim to the phantom. With sightings of the Black Monk occurring with disturbing frequency, and rumours of suspicious deaths reaching his ears, the Bishop decides to send two more of his most trusted advisors, in turn, to New Ararat, but they too meet with unexpected fates.Finally, Sister Pelagia takes matters into her own hands, and, adopting a number of ingenious disguises, she ventures across the Blue Lake in search of answers, and in pursuit of the Black Monk. But as she delves deeper into the layers of secrecy that cloak the island and its strange population, and as the body count continues to rise, Pelagia begins to realise that an encounter with a ghost may be the least of her problems...

Erast Fandorin, our erstwhile gentleman sleuth and hero has gone off to serve in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) so as to forget his personal sorrows. Captured by the Turks, Fandorin wins his freedom by beating his captor at backgammon. He then encounters a naive, young "progressive" Russian woman trying to join her "husband" at the Russian headquarters. It's here where the action really takes off. Fandorin is requested to investigate certain devious goings-on, and he eventually exposes a well-known French journalist as a Turkish agent (who was one of the children raised by Lady Astair's establishments in The Winter Queen). The new Fandorin thriller is another compelling page-turner from Boris Akunin.

General Khrapov, newly appointed Governor-General of Siberia and soon-to-be Minister of the Interior, is murdered in his official saloon carriage on his way from St Petersburg to Moscow.The killer, disguised as Fandorin, leaves a knife thrust up to the hilt in his victim's chest and escapes through the window of the carriage. Can Fandorin escape suspicion?A battle of wills and ideals, revolutionaries and traditionalists and good versus evil.